Boars have been filmed running alongside vehicles on roads, jogging down beaches filled with sunbathers, sniffing the tarmac at the city’s international airport — and even falling through the ceiling of a children’s clothing store.

Easy pickings from rubbish bins and open air barbecue pits as well as humans deliberately feeding them have enticed the wild animals to leave their trotter prints across a growing swathe of the concrete jungle.

The situation has some people rattled.

“They are dangerous to pedestrians as they rush down the hill. They pose threats to the older and the weak, hazards to traffic and hikers,” local councilor Chan Chit-kwai, who wants to see steps taken to reduce the wild boar population, told AFP.

“It’s not as easy as those people saying we can all just live in peace,” he added.

City authorities say the number of sightings and nuisance reports caused by boars has more than doubled, from 294 for all of 2013 to 679 for the January to October period last year.

Injuries have been reported. In October, two elderly people were bitten by a wild boar near a public estate while four months earlier two people needed stitches after they were attacked near the University of HongKong, local media reported.

The city’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) is now considering euthanising “high risk” wild boars that are deemed aggressive or have a record of attacking humans.

“In those cases, we would use drugs to euthanise the wild pigs,” conservation officer Cheung Ka Shing told reporters. The agency has also sterilised 54 wild pigs who regularly appear near urban areas and relocated 92 others to more remote locations.

Some local politicians have proposed more active measures such as introducing predators, legalising hunting and even relocating pigs to an uninhabited island — the latter idea getting short shrift given pigs can swim.

– ‘Not scared’ –

But many balk at harming the boars.

Near the entrance to Aberdeen Country Park on the main island, a wild boar family of three is snoozing under warm sunlight — a trio of elderly HongKong residents playing cards just a few meters away.

“I’m not scared. As long as you don’t poke them or throw things at them, it will be fine,” said 73-year-old Mr Fung, one of the card-players said.

“They have made the Aberdeen country park an attraction,” explained another park regular, 70-year-old Mr Lai, who said he encounters boars often while hiking.